The proposition discussed, and, I think, clearly established, relates to the essential propriety and the fitness of the system of domestic slavery as an institution. Whether this institution is capable of improvement, and, if so, what improvements are demanded by the progress of civilization, are questions quite independent of any thing yet discussed. These topics may engage our attention at a future period in these lectures. I would only remark, in this place, that the system has undergone great modifications since its adoption. Laws and usages that were, no doubt, eminently adapted to the extremely barbarous character of the race, when first brought into the country, have long since become obsolete, and the same may be said of many subsequent regulations. Even the stringent measures adopted on the rise of abolition excitement in late years, have had but a brief authority. The progress of civilization is the same in its results in this case as in that of any other people. As a state of barbarism yields to the light of civilization, men are more and more disposed to do right, and the laws and usages which were before necessary to compel them to do right, are thereby superseded, and soon grow into disuse. Hence, many of our Northern citizens who form their opinions (as many do) of the practical character of this institution at the present day from the historical account of the laws and usages of a former period, regardless of the fact that they have become, for the most part, obsolete, entertain a very incorrect opinion. The institution at this day is a very different affair, practically, from what they suppose it to be, judging, as they do, from the laws and usages appropriate to a more barbarous condition of the race. I have no hesitation in affirming that in by far the greater number of instances, the condition of Southern families, embracing domestic slaves, is much better (that is, both whites and blacks) than that of the larger number of Northern families, with hired domestics, on large farms. The labor is much less severe, and the discipline much less strict. The Northern family has more frequently to appeal to the authority of civil law, and to the right of dismissing unfaithful servants, than the Southern has to appeal to domestic discipline. And still further, the Southern domestic is practically, in all respects save one, quite as much upon a social footing with the white members of the family as the Northern domestic is with the family in which he is employed, whilst the sympathy existing between these different castes in the Southern family is much greater than that which exists in the Northern.